Believarexic

by J. J. Johnson

  The kids all looked like they were between thirteen and eighteen. It was a mix of girls and boys. It hadn’t occurred to me that there would be boys. Boys had thus far been such a nonpart of my life in the hospital. I self-consciously ran my fingers through my hair, realizing that it had been good to have a break from worrying about how I looked to the male species. I was not ready for their return to my life, not yet.

  Most of the kids were white. There was one African- American girl, along with Bronwyn. The patients didn’t look goth or punk or have piercings. They looked normal, except none of their shoes had laces. And every one of them seemed angry or annoyed. They all sat with their arms crossed over their chests. Not one of them smiled at us or said hello.

  The room was the size of our lounge, but without couches, or carpeting, or any soft surfaces whatsoever. In the corner, a TV was strapped to a three-shelved, wheeled cart; a VCR was cable-locked to the middle shelf, just like at school. The room had tile floors, like in our nurses’ station, and lots of mismatched chairs arranged in a circle.

  I sat next to Bronwyn and tried to look around without looking like I was looking around. Did these patients wonder about me and Bronwyn the way we wondered about them? Were we one zoo exhibit looking at another? Monkeys looking at bears?

  “Slouching, two points,” a male nurse said to a patient.

  The kid sat up, but only a little.

  There were three nurses in addition to CD Lady. Two were big African-American dudes who looked like bouncers, like they should be checking IDs outside a college bar. The other nurse was a young white woman. All three had clipboards.

  “Slouching, two points,” the same nurse said to another patient.

  The kid rolled his eyes as he sat up.

  “Eye roll, two points.” The nurse made a note.

  And when a kid whispered to another kid, the nurse said, “Talking, two points.”

  Holy cats. Talk about strict. How did this point system work? Did “two points” mean two points added or taken away? Did the most or least points earn something? Passes? Privileges?

  And, significantly, selfishly, I wondered: were Bronwyn and I on their point system while we were in this group? I didn’t want to ask, because I didn’t want to know. And I didn’t want to give the staff ideas.

  CD Lady turned on the TV and struggled with the VCR controls. We watched a movie about PCP called Desperate Lives. It starred the blond actress from Girls Just Want to Have Fun. It was extremely hokey. I think it was an old Afterschool Special, because CD Lady fast-forwarded through commercials.

  When it was over, we had to go around the room and share our responses to the movie.

  One girl, young, with short hair, shook her head and refused to talk.

  “Opting out, ten points,” a nurse said.

  Another kid, older, with a mullet, said he thought it was “bullshit propaganda.”

  “Swearing, five points,” two nurses said in unison.

  The girl next to him said, “I think it seemed unrealistic, because no one would ever jump out a window or drive off a cliff like that.”

  Goodness, did that set CD Lady off. “The dangers of drugs like PCP are very real. Very real.” Her voice was low and quiet, but hard as nails. “How about every one of you writes an essay about the dangers of PCP?”

  The room groaned, but no one said any actual words. We kept going around the circle. When they got to us, Bronwyn said, “It was certainly food for thought.”

  I knew she was joking: Food for thought! Hello, I’m from the EDU! I’ll be here all week! But I was too scared to giggle.

  My hands were shaking when it was my turn. I said, “It makes me worry about my brother. I hear rumors about him and drugs.”

  It was true. There was always gossip about Rich smoking pot. And his eyes often looked bloodshot.

  What if my brother had a chemical dependency? Did…did he need to be on the Adolescent Unit while I was on the EDU?

  What if he was on something more dangerous than weed?

  Should I bring it up in family therapy?

  No, no, no. My family didn’t need more dramatic accusations and confrontations. Plus, my brother would disown me.

  But how would I feel if he got hurt, or overdosed, and I hadn’t said anything to my parents, just because I didn’t want to cause a fuss?

  “What if my brother has a drug problem?” I asked Dr. Wexler toward the end of individual.

  “Is that a concern for you?” He opened the paper lunch bag on his desk and pulled out a baggie of peanuts and raisins.

  “Well, obviously.” I said. “Or I wouldn’t bring it up.”

  “Why is it a concern?” Dr. Wexler tossed a peanut into his mouth. He often munched on snacks during sessions. I couldn’t decide whether he was truly hungry, or whether eating in front of EDU patients was some sort of therapeutic technique.

  “Because I hear rumors about him using drugs,” I said. “What if he jumps through a window or drives off a cliff, like in the movie we had to watch?”

  “That seems unlikely. Are you focusing on your brother because you want to avoid your own issues?”

  “I just spent forty minutes talking about my own issues. Dependency issues, individuation issues, perfectionism issues, anxiety issues…”

  Dr. Wexler said, “If you’re truly concerned about your brother’s safety, that would be a good thing to bring up in family therapy. Which, by the way, I’ll be leading from now on. I spoke to your parents.”

  “Why not Dr. Prakash? She handled it like a pro.”

  “Dr. Prakash doesn’t do family therapy.”

  “She did the other day.”

  “That was…unprecedented. You’re stuck with me.”

  I groaned and tipped myself over on the couch. Like I didn’t get enough of Dr. Wexler in group every day? Plus individual?

  And bringing up my concerns in family therapy? Sure. Look how great that went last time.

  But what if he really had a problem?

  What was the difference between telling and tattling?

  Thursday, December 8, 1988

  Tonight’s dinner was liver. A huge, grayish-brown blob of organ meat.

  It was the most disgusting thing I had ever seen. Just looking at it made me want to vomit.

  “Nurse Chuck?” I said.

  “Yes, Patient Jennifer?”

  “I’ve found my third dislike.”

  “Okay. I’ll write it down. Remind me, what are your others?”

  “Broccoli and mushrooms.”

  Monica said, “Are you sure you want to put liver as a dislike? I know it’s grody, but it doesn’t get served very often.”

  I looked at the gelatinous mass on my tray. Prodded it with my plastic fork. “I have never been so sure of anything in my whole entire life.”

  “All right, Jennifer,” Chuck said. “Just get it down, and it’ll be the last time you have to eat it in your whole entire life.”

  Since I was on 2500s, it was a honking big portion. I cut the liver into tiny pieces and tried to tell myself it was steak. I started with my salad, taking bites of liver with every forkful to attempt to mask the taste. Then the zucchini and liver, then the roll and liver, then the banana and liver, with sips of whole milk in-between.

  I looked around, trying to find something to distract me.

  Trendy was standing next to Thriller, who was on 3500s. She came over to our table. She checked her notes. “Jennifer, how many fat exchanges did you have?”

  I choked down a bite of liver. “Um, just salad dressing. No, wait, also a butter with my roll.”

  “Just one butter?”

  I nodded, trying to keep the liver from coming back up. “That’s what was on my tray.”

  “How many calories are you on?”

  “Twenty-five hundred.�
�

  She scrunched her nose. “I’m sorry, dear, but you were missing a butter. You should have had three fat exchanges.”

  I looked at Amanda. She tilted her head in pity. Which meant Trendy was right. Three fat exchanges.

  “Can’t she eat an extra butter at breakfast tomorrow?” Monica asked.

  “It’s not like she was trying to be sneaky,” Bronwyn said.

  I looked at my tray. I had two bites of liver left. My salad was gone, my roll was gone, my zucchini was gone. The only thing left was a quarter of a banana and a few sips of milk.

  “I’m sorry,” Trendy said again. She sounded like she meant it. She set a foil-wrapped rectangle of butter on my tray. “But it has to be with this meal.”

  I looked at Chuck. He nodded in what looked like reluctant agreement.

  “All right butter. Come to Papa,” I said. Sometimes you just had to buck up and do what had to be done, whether you wanted to or not. But dang, recovery was unpleasant work sometimes.

  I choked down my last two bites of liver.

  And then I ate banana slathered with butter.

  It wasn’t good. But it was better than the liver.

  Friday, December 9, 1988

  Ratched informed me that I would have no more extensions on my Personal Eating Disorder History. Sunday evening was the allotted time for me to bare my soul. She wrote it on the calendar in the nurses’ station, in thick black ink.

  I worked on my essay all afternoon, taking breaks only to call Mom and then Kelly. (Fridays at 4:00 had become my standing appointment for Kelly calls. She would fill in the details of whatever she’d hinted at in her notes and cards. Daily mail—most loyal friend, ever.) I checked the clock constantly—I couldn’t wait for 7:00, when my brother would come visit. I decided I wasn’t going to confront him about pot smoking or talk about anything heavy. I was just going to enjoy having him all to myself. Maybe I could teach him how to play Bullshit or something.

  After dinner, I worked on my essay. And watched the clock. I watched 7:00 come and go.

  I started to worry. What if Rich had hit a deer? Or gotten lost? Or driven off a cliff in a PCP-induced hallucination?

  After 7:30, as soon as the phone was free, I called home.Mom answered. “I’m so glad you called again, Jenny! I’m sorry, but Rich isn’t going to be able to visit you tonight.”

  My heart sank. “Earlier you said he was all set to go.”

  “I know, honey. But the roads are bad, and the news says it’s worse in Syracuse.”

  I looked at the snow coming down. I sighed.

  “Okay. Well, can I talk to him at least?”

  “Oh, he’s not here. He’s at Laura’s.”

  “So the roads were too bad to drive to Syracuse, but they were clear all the way to Laura’s?”

  “Well, Jenny, Syracuse is farther than Laura’s. Be reasonable, hon.”

  I let out another long, heavy sigh. “You don’t have to defend him, Mom. I’m just disappointed.”

  “I know you are,” she said. “Maybe he could come next week.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m sure he’s sorry.”

  I’m sure he’s sorry meant Rich hadn’t actually said he was sorry.

  Rich knew how to drive through snow. He just didn’t want to visit his loser sister in the psych ward.

  Saturday, December 10, 1988

  The roads were clear when Mom took me out on a pass. We went to the Penn-Can Mall, which was all done up in holiday decorations. We browsed B. Dalton; she gave me ideas for books Dad would like for Christmas. I tried my best not to dwell on whether I’d still be in the hospital for Christmas. That line of thought was treacherously gloomy. I wanted to try to be cheerful, and enjoy being out on pass.

  We walked around for a while, looking at earrings and greeting cards, and the new music releases. But we stayed well away from clothes.

  Then we sat at a table in the pizza place. I had a small Sprite. I was allowed to have an optional liquid on passes.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” Mom said.

  Nothing good ever came after those words.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, trying not to panic.

  “Your brother is thinking about going skiing with Pete. In Colorado.”

  “Oh!” Relief. “That’s cool. I mean, I’m slightly jealous. And I wish he’d come last night, but that’s fine—”

  “For Christmas.”

  “Oh.”

  “Honey, we know Christmas means a lot to you.”

  I nodded.

  “And no final decisions have been made.” She sounded vague, as if she wasn’t one of the two grown-ups responsible for making the final decisions.

  I fidgeted with the straw in my Sprite. “Okay.”

  “We wanted to talk with you first. But your brother thinks Christmas is going to be sad, with you in the hospital—”

  My throat got tight. “I was hoping I would be home by then. Or if not…that I could come home for the day. On pass. And we could all be together. Not in the hospital.”

  Her eyes filled with sympathy. “Do you really think that could happen?”

  Slowly I shook my head. I had to be honest with myself. I would not be home for Christmas. Not even for a day pass.

  I was still gaining weight. There was no way I would be discharged in two weeks. And there was also no way staff would even give me meal-out privileges, which I would need, to have enough time for the trip home and back.

  Mom reached across the table and took my hand. “Honey. Your dad and I have been thinking about it. What we think we’ll do is get a hotel room at the Genesee Inn, across from University Methodist. We can go to the Christmas Eve service, and then hang out at the hotel. Christmas morning, we’ll pick you up right after breakfast and open presents.”

  I could feel my lower lip sticking out. Pity party. “If I keep getting all my passes.”

  She nodded. “I’m sure you will.”

  I told myself not to cry. Not here, not in the mall. Look at everything my parents were doing. Trying to make Christmas as nice as possible. I had to think about my family, not just myself. I had to be mature. “Okay. I understand.”

  “Thank you, honey.” She squeezed my hand. “You’re growing up, you know that?”

  That made the tears tumble out.

  Sunday, December 11, 1988

  My notebook shook, I was trembling so much. Writing my essay, reliving every terrible thing that had brought me here, had been grueling. And now I had to read it out loud?

  Forget butterflies. My stomach was hosting a plague of locusts.

  These pages contained my deepest secrets, things I’d never admitted to anyone. Things so shameful, I’d never even written them in my diary, for fear someone might read it.

  Everyone had gathered in the lounge—all the patients and nurses on evening shift. Bronwyn gave me her teddy bear to tuck under my arm, along with Bearibubs. Monica rubbed my back.

  I took a deep breath and started reading.

  Seventeen hand-written pages later, I finished. I was relieved, and horrified: I’d gotten it over with, but now everyone knew everything, the whole sordid, ugly truth about me. Would Chuck think less of me? Would Monica and Bronwyn still like me?

  I looked up from my notebook. Half the room was crying. Everyone looked stunned. All my fellow patients, plus Baldy and Chuck—even Ratched—looked affected.

  Baldy’s face was red, and he kept wiping his eyes. “I just…I thought you were this nice girl with an eating disorder,” he said. “Not that you’re not nice. But now I see all this crap you’ve been through. You hide it well.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of practice pushing it down.”

  “Listening to you, I know exactly when your disease started,” Baldy said. “It was in second g
rade.”

  I shook my head. “My eating disorder didn’t start in—”

  “Maybe not the eating part. But the instant you started receiving praise without learning to give it to yourself. It forced you to think you needed to be perfect.” He rubbed his face.

  Ratched said, “It reminds me of something, and I think this might help you.” She drummed her fingers on her knee. “Think of yourself as a flower.”

  A flower? Really? No thanks.

  She continued, “All of you girls. I want you all to picture yourselves as flowers, uncurling from your stems.”

  Gag.

  “When you rely on other people’s praise and opinions for your self-esteem, like you talked about in your essay, Jennifer, it is as though you, the flower, need someone to glue petals onto you. When what you really need is to take up nutrients from your roots, and bloom from within.”

  I had to admit, that kind of made sense.

  “All of you girls, you need to internalize your self-worth. Grow your self-esteem from inside yourselves. Then you don’t have to be insecure about your petals—worrying about them falling off, or fading, or needing someone else to come along and glue on new ones. You can just grow your own.”

  Wow. Lessons learned: (1) I was a flower and needed to bloom from within, and (2) sometimes wisdom could come from an unexpected source.

  Chuck said, “That’s a cool way of looking at it, Sheryl.”

  Baldy said, “You know what I wish, Jennifer? I wish I could take an eraser to your past. I want you to be able to start new.”

  “You have everything going for you, kid,” Chuck said.

  Did I have everything going for me? It didn’t feel like it.

  I picked at the fur of Bronwyn’s teddy. My hands kept shaking. I didn’t feel a major catharsis or awakening. I just wanted this to be over: my unveiling of secrets, and my whole EDU stay, and my entire eating disorder.